On 19 June 1964, the landmark Civil Rights Act was finally passed in the United States Senate following an 83-day filibuster. An iconic moment of 20th century social history, not just in the US but worldwide, the legislation banned all discrimination based on race, sex or national origin, as well as any form of racial segregation.
Although the act was the culmination of the American civil rights movement as a whole, historians agree that it was ultimately sparked by the so-called “Birmingham campaign” which had taken place the year before.
The Birmingham campaign
Birmingham, in the state of Alabama, was a flagship city of the policy of racial segregation in schools, employment and public accommodation. It lay in the American South, where in centuries gone by, most of the country’s black population had worked as slaves and where their white compatriots had gone to war over the issue of slavery in 1861.
Listen NowAlthough black people were theoretically emancipated after the north’s victory in the Civil War, their lot did not improve much in the century that followed. Southern states enacted ‘Jim Crow’ laws which enforced racial segregation through formal and informal policies.
By the early 1960s, riots, discontent and violent police reprisals had given rise to a relatively minor movement asking for equal rights in Birmingham, which had been founded by local black reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.
In early 1963, Shuttlesworth invited the star of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., to bring his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to the city, saying “if you win in Birmingham, as Birmingham goes, so goes the nation”.
Once the SCLC’s members were in town, Shuttlesworth launched the Birmingham campaign in April 1963, beginning with a boycott of industries that refused to employ black workers.
Listen NowNon-violent protests
When local leaders resisted and condemned the boycott, King and Shuttlesworth changed their tactics and organised peaceful marches and sit-ins, knowing that the inevitable mass arrests of non-violent protesters would gain international recognition for their cause.
It was slow going at first. But a turning point came when the campaign decided to seek support from Birmingham’s large student population, who suffered from segregation in the city more than most.
This policy was a huge success, and images of teenagers being brutally hosed by police or having attack dogs set on them brought widespread international condemnation. With recognition came support, and peaceful demonstrations soon broke out across the south as Birmingham’s segregation laws began to weaken under the pressure.
Kennedy’s assassination
Civil rights leaders meet with President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office of the White House after the March on Washington, D.C.
President John F. Kennedy was in the midst of trying to get the civil rights bill through Congress when he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963.
Kennedy was replaced by his deputy, Lyndon B. Johnson, who told members of Congress in his first speech to them as president that “no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long”.
Despite the efforts of numerous dissenters, the bill was passed by the House of Representatives in February 1964 and moved on to the Senate shortly after. There it ran out of momentum, however; a group of 18 mostly southern Democratic senators obstructed a vote by extending the debating time in a move known as “filibustering” or “talking a bill to death”.
Watching this debate on 26 March were Luther King and Malcolm X: the only time these two titans of the civil rights movement ever met.
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X waiting for a press conference together on Capitol Hill in 1964.
Image Credit: Library of Congress / Public Domain
The waiting is over
After months of talking and waiting under the watchful eye of the rest of the world (including the Soviet Union, which had been greatly enjoying the easy propaganda victories America’s racial problems provided it), a new, slightly weaker version of the bill was proposed. And this bill gained enough Republican votes to end the filibuster.
The Civil Rights Act was eventually passed by a crushing 73 votes to 27. Martin Luther King Jr. and Johnson had won, and now racial integration would be enforced by the law.
Aside from the obvious social changes that the bill brought about, which continue to be felt to this day, it also had profound political effect. The south became a stronghold of the Republican party for the first time in history and has remained so ever since, while Johnson won that year’s presidential election by a landslide – despite being warned that support for the Civil Rights Act might cost him the vote.
The act failed to bring about equality for minorities in America overnight, however, and structural, institutionalised racism remains a pervasive problem. Racism remains a contentious topic in contemporary politics. Despite this, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was still a watershed moment for not only the US, but also the world.
